Strike: FG cannot borrow N1.1 trillion to satisfy ASUU’s demands- Umahi

Strike: FG cannot borrow N1.1 trillion to satisfy ASUU’s demands- Umahi

GOVERNOR David Umahi of Ebonyi State emphasized yesterday that the nation could not possibly borrow N1.1 trillion to satisfy the demands of the Academic Staff Union of Universities or ASUU.

The complete implementation of the 2009 agreement that ASUU signed with the Federal Government is among the demands made by the organization, which has been on strike for more than five months.

This was said by Umahi when he hosted the Board of Trustees of the Nigeria Police Trust Fund in the Abakaliki new government house.

According to Umahi, “I cannot see how we cannot sit down with our ASUU leaders and iron out this problem about the ASUU strike.”

He advised the Federal Government to begin by releasing fraction by fraction of the funds demanded by ASUU as a way of finding lasting solutions to the present educational challenge facing the country.

“I have read in social media and newspapers, how students got into trouble just by sitting at home or engaging in means of keeping themselves busy instead of being in schools. There is no way the country, Nigeria will go and borrow 1.1trillion to meet ASUU’s demand. It’s quite unreasonable. Are their demands genuine? Yes, but we can start little by little.

“There must be a commitment on the side of both parties, ASUU is not asking this to take to their houses so to say, they are asking it for our children to better the infrastructure, to better the lecturers and the students. Yes, but we can start with a fraction of that and then have a programme that will run on the platform of sincerity to address all the lots.

“But let me also say that most of the time, our people have low appetite for maintenance of public works. No matter how much you deploy to these universities, unless the users, the industry, the regulators begin to treat public infrastructure as their own in the various universities, it will continue to go bad no matter how much the federal government deploys to it.”